Fresh Kills, NY There is little to report. People weren’t talking to me much until I started to pitch in. Mostly I have worked on the breathing apparatus. These are fairly crude devices, like bellows that is about the size of a person. They have ten of these running normally for a crew, about one per person, and there were several mine entrances going at any time. With this situation, all mining operations have been suspended, and the apparatus has been transferred to this site. It was only yesterday that all of them became fully operational in the rescue.

There is an old landfill air system, part of the design, but it isn’t designed to support humans. The ducts are more designed to drive waste gases out. These gases are used as fuel on site as they can, but it isn’t useful as a primary energy source.

The camp is breaking into factions. Some say to clear starting from the mine entrance. Some think they should dig directly down, starting with a narrow air shaft they can lower food down, then widen it to aid in the rescue. The problem is, there is no modern equipment for pinpointing exactly where to dig. It could be a shot in the dark.

Another faction wants to clear the tunnel leading to the trapped miners, but the issue becomes the fear of another collapse.

They say they think they have heard voices coming back up the air tube, and so their hopes of rescuing their trapped brethren remain high despite the long odds of success.

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Fresh Kills, NY – The men continue to pump air into the chamber. There have been several strategies employed in the rescue, but each has met with unforeseen issues. They tried to clear waste from the top, but the time this would consume is too great to hope for any of the men trapped to survive. They have also tried clearing the shaft leading in, but cave-ins continue to happen. After the garbage hit the landfill, the plastic bags tended to rupture, making the piles essentially fluid. It’s like quicksand, the more you move out, the more falls in. Tunneling underneath the surface leads to collapses, and so they are going to try to drill a shaft down. The machinery they have might have been capable of this were a mine, but its weight makes it unsteady on the landfill base. They also have limited diesel fuel to run it. I was thinking about calling Blankenship Towers for a donation, but I guess that bridge is burned. Can anybody supply a recipe for biodiesel? It would seem like we’d have enough raw materials to cook some up. I’d do anything to help if it could get me away from the smell.

There doesn’t seem to be any one person in charge, but several leaders are emerging from the men here. The situation looks more and more dire, but the men and their families refuse to give up hope.

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